


Stay the Night

by saawarattene



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, M/M, but i will tell you right now this does not have a particularly happy ending, canon-typical alcohol consumption for these two, death tag just to be safe since that is kind of the premise, sakyo buys a haunted house planning to flip it and azuma is the ghost haunting it :), that makes it sound very lighthearted and fun and it Kind of is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27503740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saawarattene/pseuds/saawarattene
Summary: Furuichi Sakyo never considered himself someone who believed in ghosts, but unfortunately that didn’t seem to matter.
Relationships: Furuichi Sakyou/Yukishiro Azuma
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	1. Open the Door

**Author's Note:**

> got hit in the back of the skull with an idea and wrote this in 36 hours hahahoo

The house was quite nice. Spacious, conveniently located, and if the style was outdated, it was elegant enough that only a little remodeling would be necessary. Really, the guy who’d sold it to him for a pittance was an absolute fool. The guy’d claimed he “couldn’t find a buyer,” but all that really meant was he was a poor salesman, so-called “ghost problem” or no. One look and Sakyo could tell he’d easily be able to quintuple his investment with only a little work, if he didn’t decide to have the whole place demolished and turned into something that would really turn a profit.

Somehow, though, he didn’t really want to do that. The house was perfectly sound structurally, and more than that, it just felt like someplace worth saving. Maybe that was silly and sentimental of him, but the house had clearly been loved at one point, and more than one family worth of children had grown up there. He’d at least see what he could do with the place first. It’d be an interesting little personal project to do in his spare time.

He couldn’t really deny that there was also an odd feeling to the house, though. Of course, he didn’t actually believe the nonsense he’d been told about ghosts, but every once in a while, while sorting through the old furniture to see what to leave and what to sell, he’d catch a grayish shape in his peripheral vision, or feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up for no reason. He chalked it up as his mind playing tricks on him. It was especially easy for it to do that since most of the light fixtures didn’t have bulbs in them, leaving the rooms dimly and unevenly lit. With light coming from odd angles, he kept seeing his shadow in places he wasn’t expecting. It was definitely his shadow.

But… there was one thing that he didn’t really have an explanation for. In one of the former bedrooms, he’d found a woman’s hair ornament tucked at the back of a shelf. It was a pretty little thing, and it seemed like it would be a shame to throw it away or put it in a box of junk to be sold off. He set it aside, thinking vaguely that he might give it to his mother.

Shortly thereafter, he found the same hair ornament in a cabinet in the kitchen. He thought briefly that maybe there were two, but when he went to look, the original one was gone. He stared at it. He definitely hadn’t moved it there.

After the fourth time he found the hair ornament tucked somewhere he knew he hadn’t put it, he decided he needed to figure out what was going on once and for all. He’d start by staying in the house overnight, just to make sure there really wasn’t anything supernatural afoot.

He set the hair ornament next to his phone on the cardboard box he’d repurposed as a nightstand before going to sleep, and when he woke in the middle of the night, feeling oddly disoriented, it was gone. He glared at the empty space there. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been expecting that, but it was still rather unwelcome, especially considering this time it’d vanished from right next to him while he was sleeping.

Deciding to get up and get some water, he grabbed his empty water bottle off the box and headed out to the hallway. He turned the corner into the kitchen and dropped the water bottle he’d been holding on the floor because standing barely a foot in front of him was an incandescent white human form, the indistinct shape of a kimono draped in a floor-length train of silvery hair, wide golden eyes holding his. The edges of the figure blurred and shifted, the details difficult to perceive, as if he were looking into the sun. A dark slit of a mouth opened in the pale face but did not move to match the words as a distant, sibilant voice spoke, implacable, _“You shouldn’t be here.”_

“Oh, fuck,” was the thing that came out of his own mouth, for some reason.

The figure blinked.

“So you’re real,” he said, numbly, letting his instinctive fighting stance loosen a bit when the spirit made no move to advance. “Holy fuck, you scared the absolute shit out of me.”He let out a deep breath to steady himself, hand automatically going to adjust his glasses but finding thin air. “So this is your house, huh?”

The figure stared at him in bemused silence for a second before… flickering. It dimmed, leaving a strangely clear afterimage of a human in a white kimono with waist-length white hair, a somber image but not at all the frankly pants-wettingly terrifying specter he had just been looking at. Then he blinked, and both the vision and afterimage were replaced with a thin, oddly ageless man about his height, wearing a dark shirt and khakis and with a long, silver ponytail draped over his shoulder. His face was delicate and sad, and when he spoke, his lips moved, and his voice sounded completely normal, albeit quiet.

“Yes.” He said softly. “This is my house.”


	2. Make the Bed

Now that he had decided to put the lumens away, the ghost was exceptionally normal looking. In fact, he was nearly indistinguishable by sight from a living human, except that he cast no shadow, and whenever he passed in front of a light, the light shone straight through him.

He also seemed to be fully content to just sit down and have a conversation, once it became clear that Sakyo was willing to do exactly that. He had introduced himself, in a rather subdued manner, as Yukishiro Azuma. He was aware that he had passed away some time ago, but not exactly how long. He also assured Sakyo that he hadn’t died _in_ the house, but had simply lived there as a child and awoken there after his passing; Sakyo wouldn’t have particularly cared, but it was good to know for the sake of a future potential buyer who might.

“Were you the one moving that hair ornament around?”

Yukishiro nodded, pulling the hair ornament in question out of his pocket.

“The guy I bought this place from told me that he’d seen and heard things and had doors closed on him. He never said anything about things being moved around.”

“That’s because I can only touch things that have belonged to me, you see.” Yukishiro turned the hair ornament over in his hands. “This house was once mine, and so I can touch the walls and doors and counters. They know me and recognize me, because they were mine once. But by the time I returned here, all the furniture had been replaced.” Yukishiro gestured dispassionately at the disarrayed furniture around them. “None of this was ever mine.”

“I see.”

“But I found…” Yukishiro paused, and Sakyo knew whatever he was about to hear wasn’t going to be the whole story. “I found this comb hidden behind a shelf in my old bedroom. None of the families who lived here after us ever found it. This, and the house, are all I have.”

Returning to the house about two hours after excusing himself from the conversation, he mounted the steps, awkwardly clutching two items in one arm while he wrestled his keys out and opened the door with the other.

“Yukishiro?” he called into the dark silence of the house.

“There’s no need to shout, I’m right here.” Yukishiro said lightly from right behind his shoulder. He managed not to jump with an effort and forced himself to calmly set one of his two parcels on the floor before turning with the other in both hands.

“Thank you for having me in your house.” He said, as formally as he could manage while speaking to someone through whom he could see the lamp behind them. “It’s nothing special, but please accept it.” He held out the small box, wrapped in plain tan paper.

“I… Thank you,” Yukishiro replied, eyes wide with surprise. “But I don’t think I can accept this.”

“Please.”

“No, but I actually don’t know if I can,” Yukishiro said uncertainly. “I can’t… I mean…”

“If you accept it,” Sakyo said, holding his gaze, “It will be yours. It will _belong to you._ So, please.”

“I don’t know if It works that way,” Yukishiro said hesitantly, looking entirely unconvinced, but tentatively reached out all the same.

It was an odd sensation. At first Yukishiro’s fingers simply slipped through the surface before his hands seemed to slowly gain substance and Sakyo felt a faint pushing on the other end of the box. He waited until he felt Yukishiro had a solid grasp before carefully letting go. Yukishiro stared at the box in his hands, mouth open in disbelief.

“Open it,” Sakyo urged, feeling strangely elated that it had worked.

Yukishiro knelt on the floor to do so, gently setting it down while he carefully undid the paper with visibly unsteady hands. Inside was a ceramic shuki, a metallic bluish-black color with a pebbly, textured glaze. It was inexpensive, but still the most attractive set he’d been able to find for purchase at this hour. Somehow, that had seemed important. Yukishiro cradled one of the cups in both hands, turning it over, clearly at a loss for words.

“I brought this as well.” He said, presenting the second parcel, which even with its loose brown construction paper wrapping was very obviously a large bottle of sake. “It’s not the best, but it’s drinkable.”

Still stunned into silence, Yukishiro reached up to accept it as well. Holding it close to his chest, he blinked up at Sakyo for a long moment before finally finding words again.

“Would— would you care to share it with me?” He said softly.

“I think I would,” Sakyo replied, and realized that yes, he really, genuinely would.

Yukishiro raised the cup, tilting it just enough for the liquid to touch his lips, but not enough to spill. Lowering it after a moment, seemingly without drinking anything, he said, “You’re right, it’s very drinkable.”

Sakyo raised an eyebrow but decided to let it go.

“So I assume you wanted to talk to me about the future of the house.” Yukishiro opened placidly. “Or my continued residence here.”

“Yeah. Sorry if this is a sensitive subject, but y’know, you can’t really live here anymore.”

“Because I’m not alive, yes.” Yukishiro smiled. “And don’t worry, I’ve long since come to terms with that part of my situation.”

“I could always try to find a buyer who’d be willing to share a house with a friendly ghost, but it seems pretty unlikely. Still, I’m not going to kick you out.” Sakyo said matter-of-factly. “I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to start, but I wouldn’t even if I did. But I’d still like to be able to sell this house. Do you think we can work something out?”

“To be honest, I’m shocked you even want to talk about it.”

“I don’t really see that I have any other options.” He sighed. “I said I wouldn’t make you leave, even if I knew how, and I can’t sell a house I know for a fact is haunted.”

“As far as I know, I _can’t_ leave.” Yukishiro said, raising the cup again to pantomime another sip. “I sometimes wish I could. Although it’s not as if I have anywhere else I want to go.” He tilted his head as if thinking. “Actually, touring Europe as a ghost might be fun. I would probably meet a lot of interesting ghosts.”

Suppressing a laugh at the image of a ghost tourist, Sakyo tried to figure out how to approach his next topic. “So if you can’t physically leave the house,” He began. “Would you be interested in _metaphysically_ leaving the house?”

Yukishiro paused in confusion for a moment before understanding visibly dawned. “You mean moving on?” He said. “To the afterlife?”

“Only if that’s something you’d want to do.”

Yukishiro tilted his head thoughtfully. “I’ve never figured out what’s keeping me here, so it’s difficult for me to know what I need to do to leave.”

“Would you… D’you want help figuring it out?” Sakyo asked awkwardly.

“I wouldn’t say no,” He replied, “But I’m not sure where to start.”

“Neither am I,” He admitted, and sighed. “I didn’t even believe in ghosts til I didn’t have a choice anymore, I’m not exactly a spiritualist.”

“Mm.” Yukishiro said absently. He was still holding his cup, regarding the contents in slight consternation.

“What is it?”

“Well, I’m done with this, but I can’t really refill it.” He said, the latter half of which made sense, since it was still filled to the brim. “I guess I should put it in the sink?”

“You’re just going to toss it out?” Sakyo said, before he could stop himself. Sure, it was _his_ sake now, but the waste still stung.

Yukishiro looked up and smiled, holding the cup out to him with a hint of amusement in his eyes. “You can drink it if you want, but I don’t think you’ll enjoy it.”

He took the cup and tried it. What had once been a perfectly acceptable sake was now water with a vague bitter aftertaste. All the flavor, not to mention the alcohol content, was just gone. “Ah.” He handed the cup back, feeling vaguely chastened. “Did you know you could do that?”

“I had no idea.” Yukishiro’s smile softened. “Nobody told me the rules for being a ghost.”

“How’d you figure out the rules about touching things?” Sakyo asked as Yukishiro drifted to his feet, then to the sink, not floating exactly but covering slightly more distance than the number of steps he took would account for.

“I… I’m not sure. It’s more of a feeling. If I try to touch or move something that isn’t mine, I can feel it not responding to me. But I thought it was because the things that were mine while I lived here recognized me from when I was alive.” He returned to the table and refilled Sakyo’s cup, then his own, watching the shining sake swirling in the dark confines of the cup. “But this cup knows that it’s mine now, even though it probably didn’t even exist while I was alive.”

It took a while for Sakyo to come around to directly asking the question that had been bothering him since the conversation started. “Do you _want_ to move on?”

“Yes, I suppose I do.” Yukishiro sighed. “I need to, sooner or later. I’m only here because I have some unfinished business here. But I don’t even know what I need to do.”

“That’s one of the ghost rules nobody told you, huh.” Yukishiro chuckled at that.

“I’m fairly certain it has to do with this house, since I know I didn’t pass away here. It must be something I can do without leaving the house, too, since I can’t do that as far as I can tell.”

“You can’t step over the threshold?”

“No, it’s more like…” Yukishiro gazed pensively into his sake for a moment. “I exist everywhere in this house at once, and nowhere outside of it. I mean, I can only manifest this, sort of physical form, which is the part of me that can move and talk and feel things, in one place at a time, but… The house is the boundary of my existence. So it’s not so much that I can’t step over the threshold, but that I _end_ at the threshold.”

Sakyo snorted. “I think I’m just drunk enough for that to make sense.” Across from him, Yukishiro laughed again.

They’d been talking for a few hours, and Sakyo had already gone back out to the car to grab the other bottle he’d bought, which he hadn’t actually intended to drink tonight, but whatever. He was beginning to feel comfortably blurred, but Yukishiro didn’t seem to be affected in the slightest. He’d poured an awful lot of cups into the sink by this point, but he supposed ghosts probably didn’t have the same reaction to alcohol as living humans did. Or maybe this guy was just a scary drinker when he was alive as well.

“Y’know, excuse me for saying so, but you seem like… kind of a nice person?” He said. “Why’d you try to scare me like that? D’jyou do that to the guy who lived here before too?”

Yukishiro looked away uncomfortably. “I… to be honest, I didn’t make the man who was here before leave on purpose, but once he was gone, I was glad. I just… I just wanted to be left alone for a while longer.” His expression turned a little bitter as he continued, “Besides, you kept taking my comb. I was worried you were going to take it for good.”

“Sorry about that.” He opted not to say that he had been planning on giving it to his mother.

“But you know, I didn’t really get a good look at your face until now, either.” Yukishiro’s eyelids lowered and the corners of his lips curled up as he raised the cup again. “If I’d realized I had such a handsome trespasser on my hands, I might have decided to be a bit nicer.”

Well, twelve hours ago he wouldn’t have imagined he’d be sitting on the floor in the dark drinking with a flirtatious ghost, but life is full of surprises, isn’t it.


	3. Drift Off

Sakyo stepped through the door with a bottle in hand. He hadn’t actually had anything to do at the house today, but it had been a little while since he’d last sat down for a drink with its current resident. Of course, that meant he’d be spending the night at the house, since he couldn’t drive home afterward, but he was finding he minded doing that less and less as time went on. “Pardon my intruding.” He called out, and Yukishiro replied gently from behind him.

“Welcome back. You really don’t need to shout, you know.”

“Sometimes you don’t answer right away.” He said, turning around.

“Yes, but that’s not because I’m somewhere else in the house. It’s just if you come during the day, I need a moment to collect myself.”

“Do you sleep during the day or something?”

“I don’t sleep.” Yukishiro shook his head. “But when the house is empty, I don’t need to think about anything. If I’m not thinking, I don’t feel the passage of time. I’m not asleep, but I’m not awake either.”

“Huh.” He held out the bottle. “Well, I brought you this. I’m not too humble to say it’s something pretty special this time.”

“Ah, thank you.” Yukishiro accepted the bottle, smiling. “I’m sure we’ll enjoy it together, hmm?”

“I still haven’t gotten any closer to figuring out what I need to do to move on.”

He was seated on a stool at the living room side of the kitchen counter, Yukishiro standing on the kitchen side facing him. They’d found it to be a more comfortable arrangement than sitting on the floor lately, and it meant Yukishiro didn’t need to interact with anything he couldn’t touch. He never seemed to particularly mind, and even sometimes pantomimed sitting on the couch, but it was clear he preferred things he could actually interact with.

“Yeah, you mentioned you didn’t have any new leads the other day, too. But the house must be important, right? You didn’t die here, but you still came back. It’s an important place to you.” He paused. “Right?”

Yukishiro didn’t speak, looking silently down at the countertop.

“Yukishiro?”

“I didn’t want to come back here.”

“Hm?”

“…When I died, I hadn’t been here in years. I spent most of my life avoiding this place.”

Slowly, Sakyo sat back on the stool, trying to give him space to talk. He had the feeling he was about to hear something Yukishiro badly needed to say.

“You know I lived here as a child.” He just nodded in response.

“When I was in elementary school, my parents and older brother left on a day trip and never came home. I waited alone in the house all night. The next day, I found out they had been killed in an accident on the road.” He let that statement hang, watching the still contents of his cup.

“…I’m sorry.” Sakyo said, feeling awkwardness simmer in the pit of his stomach. He never really knew what to say at times like this, and in this case, he didn’t even know how long ago it was.

“I’ve… more or less accepted it, especially after passing away myself. Since now I know for sure death isn’t really the end, I just hope their journeys beyond the veil have been good ones.

“But I… while I don’t exactly sleep, I do dream… sort of. Sometimes I relive things that happened to me in this house. Most of them are good, or at least okay. Sometimes they’re even things that I didn’t remember, or I wasn’t there for. Almost like the house is telling me things. But sometimes it’s not something I want to see.” He traced a finger in a slow circle around his cup, sitting on the counter. “And I always dread experiencing that day again. It seems so long. I wait for them to come home forever, and they never do.”

He picked up the cup, but didn’t raise it to drink.

“I lose my family over and over again.” He said softly. “I always try to tell them not to go, but I can never do it. I can never change anything.”

“So… if this only happens when the house is empty…” Sakyo began, trying to figure out how to be gentle with him. “You don’t actually want to be left alone in here.”

“…No.” Yukishiro admitted, quietly. “I don’t like being alone.”

“So why’d you try to scare me off when I first got here?”

“I don’t know.” Yukishiro sighed. “Maybe I just wanted to go back to sleep, even if my dreams were bad.”

“If…” Perhaps he was more drunk than he thought, if he was really about to ask this. “If you don’t like being alone here… I can’t be here all the time, but would you want me to start sleeping here?”

Yukishiro looked genuinely surprised for a moment before putting on an exaggerated, salacious smirk. “Sakyo-kun, you’re not proposing we live together, are you?” He said, voice dripping with suggestion. “How scandalous.”

“Don’t test me.” Sakyo said, taking another sip. “I might change my mind once I’m sober.”

Yukishiro’s smile turned a little more genuine as he leaned in, propping his elbow on the counter. “It might be fun though. You already spend a lot of nights here, so why not just make it permanent? Oh, I guess I shouldn’t say ‘live together’ though.” He laughed. “Since you’d be the only one ‘living’ here.”

“…You’re an interesting guy, you know that?” He said impulsively, unable to stop a smile from creeping onto his face. “I wish I’d known you when… well, y’know.”

“I wish we’d known each other when I was alive too.” Yukishiro replied, resting his chin on his hand, and there was a softness to his smile that Sakyo didn’t really know how to interpret.


	4. Wake Up

Now that the remodeling was done, Sakyo had found fewer excuses to spend time at the house in his spare time, and started bringing some of his work to the house instead, at least the parts that were portable. Azuma was always a bit faded during the day, more transparent and quieter, as if it took more energy to be seen and heard. He tended to pull his “Ghost-What-Ghost” act for a while if Sakyo showed up midday, but always appeared by late afternoon.

These days, he’d usually sit at the kitchen counter to work, or on the couch with his laptop balanced on his knees. Azuma, when he chose to manifest physically, would usually sit curled in one of the armchairs. He supposed it was less “sitting” and more “floating,” and there was no real reason to do it over a chair, but he also supposed there was no better reason to do it anywhere else.

Returning from the kitchen with two mugs of tea, he set his own on the coffee table and reached down to hand Azuma his mug, the one he’d given him for his birthday, with a murmured “Here. For you.” It seemed to work better if he said it aloud, for whatever reason. Azuma reached out to accept it with a warm smile, and as he took it, their fingers touched.

He generally tried to avoid touching or being touched by Azuma, because it was uncomfortable seeing himself intersect with someone like two 3d models passing through each other, and it gave him an odd, almost electric prickling feeling. But this time their fingers didn’t pass through each other, just bumped together with a little zap, like a weak static shock. “Sorry,” he said automatically, pulling his hand away, but Azuma just stared at him, eyes widening.

Feeling suddenly awkward, he sat back down, pulling his laptop back onto his lap. He could still feel Azuma’s eyes on him, and glanced up to see him with the mug raised to his lips, still watching Sakyo over the rim. He shook himself and turned his attention back to his work.

A few minutes later, he felt Azuma’s presence next to him on the couch, but resolutely kept his eyes on the screen. Azuma’s hand slowly crept into his field of vision, settling lightly on the back of his wrist. The fingers dipped through his sweater to rest directly on his skin, giving him a faint buzzing, tingling sensation. He finally looked up to see Azuma’s eyes shining.

“I can touch you.” Azuma murmured, almost wonderingly.

“You… can.” He observed.

Azuma opened his mouth again to say something else, but instead froze in place for a second before abruptly vanishing.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that whenever you…” He began, grumbling, then stopped as he realized what Azuma had realized.

 _“Fuck,”_ he said, and closed his laptop with slightly too much force. _Fuck._

Standing in a parking lot leaning against his car seemed like an odd place to interrogate himself about his feelings, but he could think of worse ones. Such as remaining in the house where the person about whom his feelings were so complicated could appear next to him at any moment.

Azuma didn’t seem like he’d been disgusted or anything, thankfully, not that Sakyo could imagine him being disgusted after spending months flirting outrageously with him. But he hadn’t reappeared after that, either.

He briefly considered asking someone for advice, but quickly discarded the idea. The only person he’d really trust with this— his direct subordinate— would be absolutely useless for advice, being an excitable 19 year old kid with, as far as he knew, no relationship experience whatsoever.

He ran a hand over his face, pushing up his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose with a sigh. Was that really what this was?

It wasn’t like they could have any sort of future together. He reminded himself of that even while a treacherous little selfish part of his mind pictured simply moving into the house himself and living there together, for the foreseeable future. It was an uncomfortably tempting thought.

Trying to put his feelings under a microscope wasn’t getting him anywhere, just making him think about things that would never happen. Before he started thinking about what he wanted, he needed to know how Azuma felt.

That treacherous part of his mind told him he already knew how Azuma felt.

“I’m back.” He said upon reentering the house, more quietly than normal.

“Welcome back.” Azuma said softly, coalescing in front of him instead of behind, for once. He took a step forward, his face more serious and more open than Sakyo was used to seeing it. Sakyo, for his part, held his ground the same way he had the first time they’d come face to face, feeling only a little less rattled but for entirely different reasons.

“May I touch you again?” Azuma asked, candidly, with no further preamble.

Throttling down the knee-jerk impulse to grumble _“If you must”_ with some effort, he closed his eyes for a second and replied simply, “Yeah.”

He watched Azuma’s eyes follow his own fingertips to Sakyo’s cheek, as if still in disbelief that they were going to make contact. The shape of Azuma’s chest rose and fell with the memory of breath, and Sakyo tried not to wince away as Azuma’s thumb brushed a faint crescent under his right eye, passing straight through his glasses and leaving a lingering buzz in its path. He couldn’t bring himself to interrupt the naked wonder and… longing? (No, not that, that was stupid) In Azuma’s face, even when his other hand came to rest on Sakyo’s shoulder, slipping through the fabric of his sweater and the shirt underneath.

That changed when he slid that hand down Sakyo’s chest to rest over his heart, the palm of his hand pressed directly against his skin. He felt his face heating up, to his own chagrin, as if he were a teenager with a crush.

“Oy, Yukishiro.” He tried to swat Azuma’s arm away, but apparently the touching thing didn’t necessarily go both ways, because his hand passed right through Azuma’s wrist, as usual. “I… Look, I get you’re excited about being able to touch me, but you realize you’re touching me _through my clothes,_ right?”

“Ah.” Azuma pulled his hand away quickly, as if he had not, in fact, realized. “Of course, I’m sorry. They’re not my clothes.”

Sakyo struggled to keep his face impassive while Azuma lifted the hand lightly to his other cheek. “But _you_ …” He began, and then stopped, biting his lip with a small smile.

“Hey.” He said, his cheeks feeling mortifyingly warm against Azuma’s temperatureless hands.

Seemingly ignoring the interjection, he slowly drifted closer, his eyelids beginning to lower. Heart pounding, Sakyo wondered if (and when) he should close his eyes, should he tilt his head, did Azuma really intend to—

He vanished, leaving Sakyo standing in the living room, feeling like a fool, with only a distant disembodied laugh for company.

Things didn’t change much after that, to Sakyo’s relief (and, however much he tried to quash it, disappointment) but they did change a little. Azuma began sitting next to him on the couch instead of in a separate chair, not touching him but close enough for his presence to be felt. Sometimes he’d wake up to Azuma’s faint form perched on the side of his bed, or waiting for him in the kitchen to give him a quiet “good morning,” even though it was the most difficult for him to manifest in the morning.

The long, warm looks he tended to give got longer and warmer, and— unfortunately for Sakyo— his constant flirting got sappier. Instead of merely making suggestive jokes or giving embarrassing compliments, he started saying things like “I’d like to stay by your side for as long as I can, Sakyo-kun,” which was just entirely far too genuine for comfort.

And every so often he’d feel a gentle tap on the shoulder to get his attention, or Azuma’s fingertips would touch the back of his hand over the counter, and despite how little that was, it was more than enough for him.

They both knew it wasn’t going to last, but they decided they might as well enjoy it while it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is the ending, but it’s optional. the story can end here if you want it to.


	5. Morning Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, this chapter is more or less optional, but it’s how things end to me.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve given up on moving on.” Azuma said thoughtfully. “It’s still something I want to do at some point, but since I still have no idea where to start, staying here for a while doesn’t seem so bad.” He smiled softly. “As long as I’m not alone here, I’ll be happy.”

Azuma’s form was looser, less defined, as it always was when he was relaxed. He was also glowing a little, draped across the bed next to Sakyo like a gauzy, vaguely person-shaped cloud, only his face and arms distinct. He couldn’t really lie on the bed, but he could align himself with it, the same way he would pretend to sit in chairs or walk across a room even though he could just float.

“I’m still looking for a buyer, too.” Sakyo admitted. “But I’ll find you a good housemate. Someone who respects you. No matter how long that takes.” He suppressed the instinct to reach out and brush the wisps of hair out of Azuma’s face. He wasn’t sure where those urges were coming from lately; he’d never been able to do that. “I want to make sure you’ll always be welcome here.”

Azuma’s smile warmed, deepened, before slowly disappearing.

“What is it?”

“Sakyo,” he breathed, his legs dipping below the surface of the bed as he sat upright, eyes wide.

“What?”

“It’s happening,” He said, panic creeping into his expression. “It’s time.”

“What?” Sakyo pushed himself up, realization dawning horribly. “Now?!”

“Now,” Azuma said, and his face filled with a sudden, wrenching sadness. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Sakyo heard himself say, then forced himself to wrestle his own selfish feelings to the ground. “No, don’t apologize to me. If it’s time it’s time.” No matter how ready he wasn’t.

“I wanted to stay here with you a little longer,” Azuma whispered, and the tears filling his eyes spilled over, glowing softly as they dripped off his chin, falling slowly until they vanished into the surface of the bed. “I’m sorry.” He repeated.

“Maybe we’ll meet again.” He said uncertainly, his throat painfully tight. “When we… Maybe we’ll end up in the same place. I want… I want to see you again someday.” And that was it, that was all he could say. Maybe that was all he would ever have been able to say.

“Please don’t hurry!” Azuma’s voice was halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“I won’t, I won’t, I just—“ He stopped as Azuma froze in place, disappeared, reappeared in his funeral clothes, and returned to his normal appearance, tears still dripping off his chin.

“It… doesn’t hurt, does it?” He reached out, instinctively, to brush Azuma’s hair out of his face, and to his surprise, it actually worked.

“No, it doesn’t hurt.” Azuma’s voice whispered, although his lips didn’t move. That wasn’t a good sign. He reached up and cupped the back of Sakyo’s hand, holding it to his cheek. “I feel like I’m being…” His form faded away again, leaving the sensation of his hand holding Sakyo’s in midair, and his voice continued, “…pulled away. I’m so tired.”

“What should I do?” He managed to ask, through the now-unbearable pain in his throat.

“Hold me,” Azuma’s voice murmured, and he reappeared, eyes closed, tears gone. “I’m so tired. I want to sleep. I want to fall asleep in your arms once.”

He reached out, gently gathering him into his arms without another word, falling back into a lying position with Azuma bundled against his chest. They’d never had this much physical contact before, only the briefest and lightest of touches, and Azuma felt warmer and more solid than ever. How unexpected, that even though he was slipping through the veil between worlds, he’d never felt more alive. Perhaps that was why. Or perhaps Sakyo was just more _his_ at that moment than he’d ever been before.

“Thank you,” Azuma’s voice whispered directly in his ear, even though his face was buried in the curve of Sakyo’s shoulder.

“Have a safe trip.”

A few minutes later, Sakyo was alone in the house for the first time.

He sat up.

“Yukishiro?” He said, just in case. His heart, already feeling agonizingly empty, hollowed out even more at the silence he received.

And that was just… it. It was over. Unable to stand being alone in the house for a minute longer, he picked his phone off the nightstand and went out to the car, still wearing the t-shirt and sweatpants he’d planned to sleep in. He drove to the beach and sat facing out over the water until the sun started to come up.

He just hadn’t been _ready,_ he thought to himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his aching eyes. He’d always known he’d need to let go at some point, but it had been too sudden. He just needed a little more time.

On a deeper level, he knew it would never have been long enough.

It took him a long time to sell the house after that. He stopped sleeping there immediately, barely able to stand being in it for long enough to move out everything he’d left there. But he sat on it for a long time, unable to find a buyer who felt right for the place. Eventually he let it go to an effete, eccentric poet who’d been happy to pay his asking price without haggling at all; somehow he couldn’t help feeling that Yukishiro would have liked the man, had they met. Somehow, that felt important.

Even years later, he would never explain to anyone the reason why he kept a cheap metallic black shuki in pride of place on his dresser, next to an elaborate women’s hair ornament. He never did give it to his mother, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he needed someone to welcome him home
> 
> i tried to write an alternate happy ending to this and it just didn’t work. yell at me on twitter @ saawarattene


End file.
